


When First We Practice to Deceive

by BlossomsintheMist



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Femslash February, Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-04 23:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlossomsintheMist/pseuds/BlossomsintheMist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set not long after "Pale Little Spider."  Yelena has important questions for Natasha, questions that pertain to the both of them. And she's going to get her answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When First We Practice to Deceive

She knew she was there, of course.  As it so often seemed, however, why was a different matter.  So she waited, and watched while pretending not to see, going about her routine of getting ready for bed as usual, mundane and simple, almost boring if one did not take the pleasure in the routine that Natasha did whenever she got a chance to—a shower, tea and a book before brushing her teeth.  She suspected it wouldn’t take long for Yelena to lose patience.  She could have had infinite staying power on a mission, waiting for a mark, tracking a target, but ten minutes of Natasha reading Tolstoy would have the girl grinding her teeth and bursting to confront her for certain.

Sure enough, when Natasha left the bathroom after brushing her teeth, she had little warning but the sound of a foot along the tile, the slight shift of air around a moving body, before Yelena was on her, but that was enough.  She ducked under her, twisted her torso, and they ended up face to face against the wall, Natasha pressing Yelena close against it.  Her face twisted in frustrated rage, blond curls falling into her eyes.

“What is it, rooskaya?” Natasha asked, stepping back and away, dropping her arms to let Yelena free, though she stayed ready, her eyes trained on her.  “I’m not on any mission for you to interfere with today.”

“No,” Yelena said, and shook her head as if to clear it.  Blond curls fell across her face as she looked down, her shoulder hitching upward in a strangely vulnerable motion.  “No,” she said, a bit louder, as if sneering, “you wouldn’t be.”

“I enjoy my time off, my time to relax,” Natasha said.  “Relaxation keeps me sharp.  Too much sharpening blunts a knife, after all.  But then, I’m sure you know that.”

“Fuck you,” Yelena said low, wearily, under her breath, then squared her shoulders and looked up.  “I,” she started and stopped, swallowed.  She licked her lips, quickly.  “Do you like girls, Romanova?”

“Some of them,” Natasha said.  She smiled a little, to herself, and looked down, but through her lashes and peripheral vision she could see Yelena’s angry flush.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it!” she burst out.  “Women!  Do you like to have sex with women!”

Natasha shrugged.  “Some of them,” she said again, honestly this time, and starting to feel the same unwilling sympathy she’d felt so often with this young woman.  She could see the humiliated flush high on her cheeks, the uncertainty in the way her tongue flicked over her lips, the straining tendons in her wrists as she clenched her fists.  “Why?” she asked, and this time it was a genuine question, and gentler with it.

The only answer she got was the sudden impact of Yelena’s body against hers, the heat of her breath and the flexible strength of her against her chest, but Natasha had been more than half expecting it, and had been expecting the crush of their lips together, as well, the unpracticed kiss that shoved Yelena’s mouth up against Natasha’s as she panted hot breath against her lips and mashed Natasha’s lips clumsily against her teeth.  It was oddly charming; Natasha had no doubt Yelena knew  _how_  to kiss, but this was honest and raw, and her shoulders were shaking, her muscles all through her body down to her hips.  And suddenly Natasha was reminded of herself, watching the slender curve of a wrist as a woman on the street with nut-brown hair and a neat little cap pinned to her bun brushed a strand of hair behind her ear in the wind, the graceful arch of a ballerina’s thigh and the strength of her legs, the swell of breasts, and wondering if this were right, if this was at all allowed.

She let her hands rest at Yelena’s hips, feeling the tremors still rippling through her, and leaned into the kiss, turning it softer, letting her lips press lightly against Yelena’s bottom one, a smooth, gentle pressure that skimmed over the skim of her lip with just enough pressure to tingle, tilted her head and came back to touch their mouths together more firmly, pulling her closer, taking control of the kiss to lead with lips and tongue, to slip her tongue over her bottom lip, into her mouth, warm and slow and everything a good kiss should be, the sort of kiss that was real, that meant something.  Yelena’s breath shuddered, stuttered, and her eyelashes jumped up and down against her cheeks.  Natasha leaned in closer, curved her hand around Yelena’s cheek and kissed her soundly, her eyes half closed.  She tasted like cinnamon-laced caffeine pills and over-sugared coffee, and for a long moment she leaned into the kiss, both hands fisting in Natasha’s pajamas and twisting tight.

She broke away a moment later, panting, and her eyes were wide, wild.  She stared at Natasha.

“Does that answer your question?” Natasha asked, and her voice was low, huskier than even she had expected.  She didn’t entirely mean the question Yelena had asked aloud, but the one she had asked with her body, the trembling of her muscles, the desperation in the way she’d clung to Natasha for those moments.

Yelena lifted a hand to touch her lips, then looked at it as if surprised, wiped it across her mouth and balled it into a fist.  She took a deep breath, and her face screwed up as if in rage.

Natasha pushed her hair back behind her ears.  “I’ll be here all night,” she said wryly, “but I would like to get some sleep.”

“I didn’t know,” Yelena said suddenly, and her voice sounded raw.  “They say there are rumors about me.  That I … that I’m a lesbian.  But I had never heard any rumors like that about you.  And I … I don’t think that I’m anything.  When I’m with a man, on a mission, I don’t feel anything at all.”

“That,” Natasha said, “shows how well,” she put a heavy ironic emphasis on the word, “you were trained.  To show pleasure without feeling it is easier than to open yourself up to really feeling it.  To be that vulnerable.” She raised her eyebrows at the other woman.  “Isn’t it?  Why did you come here?  To see how I kissed?”

Yelena rolled her eyes at her.  “I wanted to see what you would do,” she said.  “Of course.  Though I do gather you’re famous for it, aren’t you?  Or is that more for _biting_.”

“And now you know what I would do,” Natasha said.  She leaned forward and braced one hand on the back of Yelena’s neck, kissed her again, briefly but long enough to feel Yelena’s breathless gasp of air, the way she leaned into the kiss with a soft, subtle pressure—before stepping back and raising her eyebrows at her in a question, a challenge.

“Yes,” Yelena spat.  “Now I know.”

Natasha let her go and checked her apartment for bugs before she slept.  Yelena was here on a mission, of course.  But Natasha somehow doubted that that was the only reason she’d come.  She knew what that felt like, to want something of her own, something her body did not associate with duty or with need or with lies, but only with what she had decided.  What she wanted.  She remembered all too well, and how often that had felt like a lie, too.

She would go to SHIELD in the morning, but she would keep this part of things to herself.


End file.
